Friday, January 14, 2011

Love your neighbor as yourself

I keep noticing, both in the comments here and on other sites, that some people seem to see a contradiction between the divine command to love one's neighbor and the natural right to defend oneself and others.

The Catholic Church sees no such contradiction. There are a few basic principles which allow us to find clarity in complex situations.

The first principle is simply the Law of Love, also known as the two Greatest Commandments:

"Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law?" And he [Jesus] said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets." (Matthew 22.36-40)

Now, "Love" in the Christian tradition means much more than a nice feeling or an attraction or any such emotion. Love is an act, the most fundamental act of a person. It is to will what is good. Love delights in a good that is present, and pursues a good that is absent. The love of charity, the perfection of love to which we are called, seeks the good of union with God, which is the highest good, and the one that all persons share in.

In other words, to love God is to delight in his glory. To love myself is to seek union with God. And to love my neighbor is to seek my neighbor's union with God.

Now, this sounds very abstract and mystical, but it has some very practical implications. Perhaps most importantly, it shows us the priority of goods in the world. Everything God has made is good in itself; but not everything is good for me (or for my neighbor) at any given time. Things are good insofar as they draw us closer to God.

So, my physical safety and integrity are good things. Most of the time, being healthy and secure is a real help toward union with God. But there are times when my physical or social safety becomes an obstacle to union with God. To admit I am a practicing Christian at school or at work can lead to ostracization. To serve the poor and the sick risks infection or theft of my property. To refuse undue honor to Muhammad or to the Koran, in some parts of the world today, risks imprisonment, torture, or even death.

In other words, when even a good so important as my physical integrity is set against the good of God, the choice must be for God.

Martyrdom is not something we seek out for its own sake. It is something we endure only when necessity drives us to it. So, when possible, we try to hold onto both goods: bodily integrity and union with God. Under normal circumstances, these goods are not opposed to one another. Martyrdom - of any kind or degree - is not normal.

Now, if we love our neighbors as ourselves, then we will be concerned for their physical integrity as for our own. That is, whenever it does not conflict with union with God, we will seek to defend and promote their bodily good. In families, this means caring for and sticking up for one another. In communities, this takes both personal forms - such as intervening when you witness a crime in progress - to institutional forms - such as the police and military.

The whole notion of rights to self defense and just war are founded, in the Catholic tradition, on the law of love. They are legitimate rights, but they are limited because they are not ends or obligations in themselves; they are for the sake of union with God.

So, I do not have the right to defend myself by any means necessary. Rather, I have the right to defend myself insofar as I do not commit a sin in doing so. I can fire a gun at my attacker, even shoot to kill if that is the only way to defeat the attack; but I cannot poison him, or maim him, or use deadly force where lesser force is a real option. In other words, I may not commit murder, even to prevent my own murder.

Likewise, the State has the obligation to defend the common good, and so (as noted) has the right to detain and punish criminals up to depriving them of life. It has the right to maintain a military fighting force, and to engage an attacking enemy. But the State does not have the right to murder. It has no right to kill a criminal when other means of defending the common good will do; and it has no right to use military force when other options for defense are available. It has no right, ever, to attack a neighbor. The only truly just war is a war of defense.

This will make clear, I hope, the second principle, that we may never do evil, even for apparently good reasons or seeking good consequences. Murder, the deliberate taking of innocent life, is always and under any circumstances, wrong. For that matter, any deliberate attempt to harm another person in any way, that is, to act contrary to their good, is an evil act.

The second principle simply states that nothing supersedes or dispenses from the first principle.

Hopefully, this will make the theory usually called "double effect" more clear. Double effect is a last-resort theory for extraordinary circumstances, when no choice is an unmixed good. It does not permit anyone, ever, to choose an evil act under any circumstances. Rather, it acknowledges that there are times when, no matter what one does, something bad will likely result.

First, I make sure what I am going to do is itself a good act; for example, I am defending myself and/or my children against an attacker

Next, I see what possible evils could result; for example, I recognize that I will likely injure, perhaps even kill, the attacker; I also risk injury or death myself

Finally, I make sure that the evil I risk or allow is not disproportionate to the good I seek; for example, if my attacker has a pocket knife, I don't respond with a 9mm

This principle applies to acts of individuals as well as institutional acts of governments. Morality doesn't change with size; only the means available change.

I hope this clarifies why, from the perspective of Catholic moral teaching, torture and abortion and euthanasia are always wrong; the death penalty, self defense, and defensive war must be used with extreme caution, if ever; and "pre-emptive" wars are inherently unjust.

1 comment:

What is the Coalition for Clarity?

"...I reiterate that the prohibition against torture “cannot be contravened under any circumstances...”" Pope Benedict XVI

In the political climate in which we find ourselves at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Catholics are grappling with confusing messages as to the morality of torture. Lost in political and often partisan debates is the clear voice of the Church, who has called torture evil, and who teaches with conviction the truth that a captured enemy combatant, political prisoner, or other opponent does not lose his human dignity or his right to humane treatment.

The contributors and members of the Coalition for Clarity believe with the Church that torture is intrinsically evil, a violation of our Christian duty to treat all men as our neighbors and of their right to be treated humanely and with dignity regardless of their status. We hope by discussing this issue and providing links to resources supporting Church teaching that this blog will help to bring clarity to the issue of torture and to our duty as members of God's family to oppose its use in all circumstances.

Because we seek the clarity of Church teaching on all issues, we also hope to discuss and reflect on any issue pertaining to human life and dignity, but especially those issues where the possibility that the Church's teaching is not being presented clearly exists.

It is one thing to repeatedly ask what torture is in order to get at the truth. It is quite another to repeatedly ask what it is in order to obfuscate the truth.

Sean P. Dailey

The Catechism on Torture

"2297Kidnapping and hostage taking bring on a reign of terror; by means of threats they subject their victims to intolerable pressures. They are morally wrong. Terrorism threatens, wounds, and kills indiscriminately; it is gravely against justice and charity. Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity. Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law."

Veritatis Splendor on Torture

Reason attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their nature "incapable of being ordered" to God, because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image. These are the acts which, in the Church's moral tradition, have been termed "intrinsically evil" (intrinsece malum): they are such always and per se, in other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances. Consequently, without in the least denying the influence on morality exercised by circumstances and especially by intentions, the Church teaches that "there exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object". The Second Vatican Council itself, in discussing the respect due to the human person, gives a number of examples of such acts: "Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat labourers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free responsible persons: all these and the like are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honour due to the Creator".

USCCB Study Guide on Torture

From the UN Convention Against Torture:

"For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."